Two Short Poems about Circles

Enfleshment

With her back
against mine
the word
enlivens
sound.




The Compass

The steel
point
pierces
a center
and spreads
its legs
until the hollowness
enriches
the nothingness
of something
within the circumference
of the compass'
fleshy reach.

Circle Man

He runs in circles,
while circles turn within me:
wheel upon wheel,
gear meshed into gear,
speared spokes
whirring
in whiteness;
my shadow
dominates
the center
and feeds
off the mechanized
darkness
that times
Time
like a German
metronome.

To Do Not

It has been a long time since I posted here. There is no real reason why; however, I do have some excuses. First, I wrote a story for the Warhammer short story contest, liked it, and then wrote thirty-five thousand words of a Warhammer novel on spec, which I have been serializing to my friends. Second, I wrote a story for the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial contest. In order to do that story justice, I had to re-read a couple of Heinlein novels. Third, I am writing a historical novel about a disaffected Norman Knight that accompanies William the Bastard on his invasion of England in 1066. Fourth, Murder of Crows is putting out a second edition of The White Bull and I have been working with their editors. Fifth, I have become addicted to writing reviews on Amazon. Finally, my poetic muse went underground; however, something floated up from the unconscious this morning. So here it is--"To do not."

The doing
that does
not release
the anxiety
of the not-doing
does not
replace
the experience
of the doing
that does.
To do
that which is done
is the Shaman's
share
of the sleep
that awakes
the bright cusp
of the world
of done, do
and doing.

Repetition

He trapped
himself
within their nylon
fishnet.
Without a clue
he had floundered
up a sandy river
bed, flipping
his fins
frantically
against the course
of his nature,
far removed
from the Anglican Cathedral.
His hook
curved within,
not without,
as he espoused
to all women
he attracted.
They, in blindness,
embraced him
like worms
on this ingrown
barb
while he whined
about nightmares
he dreamed
each night
before curtain call.

An Emerging Theory

I am troubled by the fact that all art is artifice, no matter how hard we try to "keep it real." The beginning of any artistic endeavor soon evolves or devolves into artifice. The artifice arises because of the limitation of our perception, our natural desire to bring order to chaos, the inherent structure of the narrative, and the level of our consciousness. In that regard, the greatest artifice is found at each end of the spectrum of human consciousness. The primitive mind desires magic, whereas the refined consciousness seeks the symbol, the numinous, the archetype. Ironically, the quotidian mind is content to reside in the fact, the so-called real, which is an artifice of culture. As a result of this battle with artifice, which is inevitable, I find myself letting go of the real and moving more to the fantastic. In this movement I find solace in the fiction of Paul Auster, Peter Ackroyd, John Crowley, and Franz Kafka and the poetry of Paul Celan, Bill Knott, Gunter Grass, and Charles Simic.

Snail Silence

The order within him
was so black
it absorbed the sun’s rays.
Bright auras, like moths,
fluttered toward this darkness
until he could no longer
stand the weight
of their anxious
pushing.
In despair,
he cried out to the snail
that slid past on silver thread:
“Why do they press against me so?
What have I done to deserve
such dreadful desire?”

The Myth of the Snail

Each day it journeys
from the rose leaf
to the yard's loam
alone.
Without the help of any god,
it carries a shell
that grows evenly
through the years,
marking the limits
of its world.
Its boundary of being
measures the stretch of silver
between the rose leaf
and the grass blade.

Life on the Under Leaf

They emerge from darkness
crawling across the cement
on the way to the rose garden.
They find their way to the under leaf,
where they sleep through the day
to appear at dusk, to work
their way back to the yard
and the trees. Not once
do they repeat their mathematical
purpose nor speak of their twin
that fades into dark history,
nor do they lecture
on verticality
or the ultimate fate
that awaits the horizon.

Vertical until Horizontal

to Ferdinand Hodler


Anxiety rises like the tide,
overflows its banks,
covers the causeway,
and drowns the rose field.
He grabs his board
and rides the waves,
hanging ten, screaming
all the way to the western shore
where bait shops and trailer parks
sit nestled in contentment.
He runs the board ashore
and stands barefoot
in the white sand,
wiggling his toes.
Two pelicans fly to Cuba.
He studies the horizon,
ready to pit his verticality
against its horizonality
until it delivers
him in the end.

Günter’s Secret

With his left hand
stained yellow
from Schwarzer Krauser,
he pounded stone
and smoothed wet clay
into starving nudes
and granite head stones.
This sinister activity,
he later wrote, emerged
from his singular German virtue:
hard work, everyday, to the end.

A Snail's Tale

A snail on a mirror,
smuggled onto a Russian truck,
one snowy night passes
through the American lines.
That morning it had been a Communist;
by nightfall, it crawled from the polished glass
onto a silk table cloth in Salzburg,
speaking German and telling a strange tale.
It said, “there are two snails:
the one that speaks here to you
and the other, my twin, that lives
on the other side of the projection.
In that alternate world of thrown light,
my double slithers on slime
along a razor’s edge of time
that flows in reverse toward Romania,
where snow buries frigid bodies
crumpled on the side of a ditch,
their eyes perfect calcified shells.”

Günter and Paul in Clichy

A break in the gray skies over the gray stones of Montmartre illuminates Sacre Coeur, which shines like a beacon above the snail shaped map of Paris.

Two men walking on the Rue Lepic look up at the beacon. The short, stout one, with a massive black mustache, makes the sign of the cross, while the tall, handsome one, pulls deeply on his cigarette, a Gauloise. They continue down the street, searching for a clean well lit café where they can share an espresso, a cigarette, and a chat about modern German poetry.

They stop in front of a café that the short stout man sniffs. He enters and walks about smelling the kitchen door, the entrance to the toilette, and the bar. He looks under the tables and runs a fat finger along the edge of the window sill. He grunts his acceptance and takes a booth near the window.

A waiter with a vulpine face, arrives with a huff, and frowns when he hears the German accented French of the stout one. He turns to the other who speaks perfect French, showing his disdain for the boche. The stout one ignores the man’s rudeness; he has accepted the French’s hatred of the Germans. Instead, he pulls a small moleskin sketchbook from his pocket of his tweed jacket and a pelican pen and quickly sketches the man’s fox like face with a few clear lines.

The other, the handsome one, extracts a thick wad of folded papers from the inside pocket of his jacket and places them on the table. They order espressos and a carafe of water and place their cigarettes on the table. The stout one pushes his drawing aside and reaches into his left pocket and produces another moleskin notebook. This one is lined and full of scribbles.

The waiter places the coffees in front of them with a bill, which they both ignore. They intend to order another later. The handsome one with the sad dark eyes begins to read in German, while the stout one watches a woman bend over in the doorway of shop across the way to pour some milk into a saucer for a sick kitten mewing on the sidewalk.

A Snail's Pace

The snail steps on command
and slides along the razor’s edge.
Its day’s work ends well and small.
The hare celebrates,
as it rests
on its racing laurels,
waiting for the tortoise
to bisect
the line of slime
that shines
silver in the sun,
reflecting brown fur
and green shell.

Seeking Celan 1968

The gray stone absorbs
her black lace as silver flakes fall
on the cobblestones near the museum.
Her perfumed thighs
spread by his warm fingers
define the degree
of their digress toward the word,
defined against polished phrases
reflected from Venetian glass.
Its sound like a laural leaf
caught in the fall breeze
soars above a serpentine Seine.
Beginning at La Manche
it arrests itself
beneath the bridge
of his mounting distress.

Resolution 2008

The garden though small
needs tending and time,
while we approach
the world though big
by baby steps.
The fear mongers
and the money men
wait in ambush for fools
taking giant frantic footsteps
without speaking the coda,
the key. Mother may I
protects baby’s foot pads
and seals hermetically the innards
of the rusting ship, sunken to lie
next to Jonah’s leviathan,
our twin who sails west
but arrives in the east
three days late and a dollar short
unexpected, unheralded,
undone, and unknown.

Conjunction

He stands before polished glass
and greets his contrariness.
His simulacra balances on crystal shards
and questions the conjunction
of known and unknown,
of good and evil,
of real and imagined,
and finally of passive
and active energies.
He claps his hands
and his dualities splinter
into sparks of yellow and red
like spent embers
in the darkest night
or twins separated at birth,
alone on the earthen plane.

Projection

The mirror throws
the stone's subtle substance;
a red powder reflected
through his green
eye transforms
iron rods
into gold bars.

The Blond Beast

I have finished the first re-write of Okeanus and have returned to The Blond Beast. Here is a cutting from near the end of the novel.

“Is Simone tied up in this story somehow?”

“Yes. She is very much involved in it. She is a perfect example of the innocence of youth. We arrive on this earth as an offspring of two people, who had a complicated existence and history before we take our first breath. We grow up thinking we are the center of the universe. We never look back and ask where we came from and who we are. We just push forward.

“Children are egotists. They think they are all knowing and universal. Their feelings are the world’s feelings.”

“I wish you could imagine the world in 1933. The people were different; they thought differently. Even the world smelled different. Now it is purified and perfumed. In 1933, you could smell people. There was no air conditioning, no shower in every apartment. People lived closer together, even though there were no cell phones. We wrote letters. We talked to one another. We didn’t spend the evening in front of a television.

“Imagine horse-drawn wagons on the streets of Berlin. Imagine the smell of horse droppings on the cobblestone. Imagine the smells of outdoor privies and coal-burning fires. Imagine butcher shops where the carcass of the dead animals hung in the window. Imagine men in uniform walking up and down the streets in the hundreds, in the thousands. Imagine the smell of fear in the air, as the great Nazi beast began to stir.

“I met your friend Sartre in 1934 in Berlin. He was a smelly little man. Quite unkempt, but smart, very smart. I remember drinking beer with him on the Unter den Linden. He was reading Heidegger and Husserl and he was full of their ideas. I had never heard of Heidegger before, but as Sartre talked about him, I became more excited. He was reading Introduction to Metaphysics. He started talking about Being, and as he talked, there was a light in his eyes. That light was so bright that he saw nothing else around him.”

A waiter appeared and asked if they wanted anything. Löwe ordered a glass of Proseeco and invited Vogel to join him. In the background Vogel heard Bettina laugh and saw her reach out and touch Simone’s arm.

“In those days, Sartre was having an affair with a married Frenchwoman. He told me that she was a ‘contingent love.’ I had never heard that expression before, but I soon experienced what he meant by it.”

He paused to sip his drink and then turned to listen to Simone’s conversation with Asshauer. Vogel was impatient to know what the old man was talking about. He didn’t believe that he was just talking. It seemed to Vogel that Löwe was calculating and sly and that his choice of conversation was designed to tell Vogel something, something that he wanted him to know.

Asshauer stood up abruptly, shook everyone’s hand and then said that he had to rush to the airport to catch his plane. Once he had left, Drago replaced the chair he had moved and Bettina signaled the waiter to bring them menus. Löwe was now sitting next to Simone and it was as if he had forgotten the conversation he was having with Vogel. He was now speaking French fluently and asking Simone about her life in Paris.

“I live in a new area called Le Défense, a high rise.”

“I have seen pictures.” He wrinkled his nose and frowned at the concept of Mitterand’s new Paris. “Why is it always the socialists who build the monuments?”

“Vogel wondered if he was thinking of Mitterand or Hitler or Albert Speer.

“Are your grandparents still living?”

Vogel was perplexed by the non-sequitur and it seemed the question also surprised Simone.

“No.”

“What were their names?”

“Rosenberg and Aschheim.”

“Your father’s mother. What was her name?”

“Martine Lauté.”

“Was she French?”

“She came from France.”

“But was she French?”

Simone looked over at Vogel to see if he was listening. Vogel thought she was saying, with her eyes only, that maybe he was right, that maybe this old man was playing some unknown game with them and they were his victims rather than his interviewers.

“I believe she did live in Berlin for awhile before she returned to Paris. In 1940, she escaped through Spain to Ireland and then to London.”

“Not in 1940 my dear, in 1941.”

“What?” Simone’s mouth fell open.

“May I take your order?” asked the waiter.

Löwe turned to the menu and ignored the look of fear and exasperation on Simone’s face. After ordering, he turned to Vogel and asked, “Did you know that Martine Lauté, the grandmother of Ms. Aschheim, knew both Sartre and Magda Goebbels?”

Vogel heard Simone gasp and then watched, somewhat dumbfounded when she reached out her hand to touch the paper-thin skin of Löwe’s hand. As her long, thin fingers touched his, Vogel imagined he saw a shock shake the old man. How long had it been since someone had touched him? The old man turned toward her and she saw tears in his bright-blue eyes. “You knew my grandmother?” she asked.

“Your grandmother was a friend, someone I met in 1933, in Berlin.”

“You said she knew Magda Goebbels?” asked Vogel, interrupting Simone’s next question.

“Martine Lauté was a student at the Kollmorgen Lyseum, located on Keithstrasse. She was a classmate of Lisa Arlosoroff, a Jewish girl from Königsburg, my mother’s hometown, and Magda Friedländer, who later became Magda Goebbels.”

Simone’s head was buzzing with questions; however, within the chaos of her thoughts, one idea emerged as her most pressing concern – had this interview been simply a ruse to get her here at this table in Florence sitting next to this frail old man?

She cleared her throat and asked, “Am I here because of my grandmother?”

“Not exactly, but partially. You are here because of who you are and what you are.”

“I am here because I am a Jew?”

He started to laugh and then coughed. Vogel handed him a glass of water.

Machen

He finds a body at dusk
sleeping beneath a blanket
of snow.
He prods it with a steel toe
of a hobnailed boot
and demands a response
to a compound question
of being and doing.

Membrane

Lake freezing into a blue mirror
reflects me swimming.
The I in the dank drink
reaches for the revenant
shuffling on thin ice.

Chapter Thirty-Nine of Okeanus

A sibilant sound shattered his concentration. He turned and caught a glimpse of a slight figure silently moving in the shadows of the deck. He screwed his eyes into a squint to see. He was sure the shadow was not one of the sailors; it was too small and thin. Unconsciously his right hand wrapped around the bone handle of his curved dagger. His fear awakened a sense of the bear; his nostrils flared as the spirit of the baresark rose into his conscious mind.

The figure stopped, sensing his presence. The wind changed direction and he detected a faint musky perfume. He knew then it was the woman, the Xipponese diplomate, who walked in the deck’s shadows. He moved away from her, searching for a darker shadow in which to hide. He suspected his attempt to hide was futile, because he sensed she knew intuitively that a baresark lurked in the shadows.

She slowly approached him, granting him a few moments to relax. She stopped a few feet away from him, waiting in a beam of the moon’s light that was now spreading over the waters. Although the light was faint he could clearly see her thin figure, her pale white face, and her long black hair pulled back and elaborately braided in a thick cord that hung to her waist. She wore a dark purple robe and flat leather shoes. A silver pendant dangled around her neck; she wore two rings: a large silver ring on her left hand and a ruby ring on her right. She had a prominent nose, thin lips and heavy brows.

As she drew closer, he noted her teeth were white, strong and straight and her eyes pale blue, like cornflowers. Finally, he decided, somewhat subjectively, that although her expression was feral, she exuded an extreme intelligence.

“You are a Keltoi?”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know that to be true, although the Keltoi accepted me as one of them. I suspect I am related to them, especially after the things I have experienced over the last few weeks.”

She took a step forward and reached out her hand to touch his cheek. Her fingers were long and well shaped. At first he pulled back but when she reached toward him a second time, he let her touch him.

“Where are you from?”

“I am a Frenchman. I live in Paris.”

“Where is this place?”

“The Keltoi called it middangeard.”

“Yes, I have heard stories of this place. There is an ancient poem-éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended. However, I have never really believed it existed.”

“What does it mean?”

“Hail Earendel, brightest angel, above middle earth sent to men.”

“So you are from this mythic world, the home of Earendel?”

Her hand held his jaw and he suspected she used touch as a sort of lie detector.

“Yes, I am from middangeard.”

She stepped back and he let out a breath.

“How did you come here?”

“Through a portal opened by a witch.”

“A witch?”

“What witch?” Her voice rose.

“Her name is Jacqueline Le Tourneau.”

“Where does she live?”

“In France like me.” Now it was her turn to breathe a sigh of relief. He suspected she feared a witch from Okeanus, the watery realm, was opening portals to middangeard.

“Does anyone on board know what you are?”

“No.”

“Good. If they did they would throw you overboard. I sensed your presence from the start but you have been asleep and it was difficult to see you. I have a lot of questions but we have little time now. I have agreed to dine with the Captain and I will soon be summoned.”

“I have also been invited.”

“You must never reveal who or what you are.”

He noted for the first time some sympathy in her pale eyes.

“Of course.”

“What do they call you baresark?”

"The Captain knows me as the sellsword-Tatyx.”

“What is your real name?”

"Oiseau.”

“Oiseau, I am Sor Michaelsdottir. My friends called me Mikk. I am a diplomate for the Xipponese. Do you know what that means?”

"Not really.”

“It means power, power in all its forms, and it means magic.”

“What were you doing on the Island? I heard that the King hates witches.”

“The King desires power so he is forced to deal with the Xipponese. But he hates all forms of magic, which makes his intercourse with us particularly distasteful. Nevertheless, we supported him in his war against Brasilika because it was in our interest to do so but now that the war is over, the relations between our two countries is strained. I came to the Island to tr y and smooth the King’s ruffled feathers.”

“Did it work?”

“A little. He lost the war with Brasilika and decimated his mercenary army in the process. He is now weak and needs his allies more than ever. Although it offends him to admit it, he knows he needs us. Imagine Oiseau, being afraid of witches, dragons and daemons in our world. It is like being afraid of life itself.”

“You are right Sor Michaelsdottir. We do have many things to discuss because dragons are the reason I left middangeard.”

She cocked her head to the right and Oiseau knew he had her attention: however, at that moment, the botswain rang the time and Roby called for them.

The Prologue to Okeanus

I am editing my fantasy novel Okenaus. Here is the Prologue.


On October 31, La Toussaint, Benoit Kohlbert leaned against a brass street lamp on a corner of an intersection near the Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris. His shadow stretched across the street until it penetrated the boundaries of a dense wood.

He whispered, “I shouldn’t go. It’s not fair.”

He gazed into the woods with such longing, however, that a stranger stopped and asked if he needed help.


Benoit waved him away and as soon as the man turned the corner, he argued, “but it is really better for my wife if I do this. I need it and it calms my nerves and makes me a better husband.”


A figure emerged from the woods, a shadow really, an outline of a man or a woman.
Benoit gave a faint wave. The figure waved back and then lit a cigarette, which illuminated delicate olive features, long black hair, and a slight frame.

Benoit made up his mind. He straightened his jacket, looked both ways and then hurried across the street, dodging the nighttime traffic.


As he approached, the figure, dressed in a black dress and stiletto heels, reached out to take his hand. Benoit smiled because the prostitute, in honor of All Saints Eve, wore a Venetian mask of pink porcelain, leaving only eyes and full red lips exposed. The two turned away from the streetlights and entered the autumn woods like Hansel and Gretel.

Benoit had been here before and he knew the routine. They walked silently to a clearing deep within the park where the young man spoke for the first time, telling him the fee and asking what he wanted.


Benoit fished a wad of euros from his pocket and handed them to the prostitute, who sat down on a tuft of brown grass and multi-colored leaves to count the bills.


While waiting, Benoit heard two things, which distracted his attention. The first was a distance rumble of thunder from the north, somewhere over Sacre Coeur. Because of global warming, Paris was undergoing a drought and rain was a rare and unexpected event. Even though France desperately needed it, rain tonight, he thought, was a bad omen. The second thing, he heard, was a soft hollow thump coming from his right, just above the trees; the sound repeated regularly like a runner’s heart at rest.


The young prostitute, ignoring the sounds, reached for his hand to pull him down onto the grass, but Benoit, unnerved and distracted by the eery sounds of thunder and thumping, pushed the hand away and looked up through a break in the limbs of the trees, where a deeper, darker blue shadow separated from the rain filled clouds. The shadow hung in the air like a hummingbird, its great wings filling with air and then propelling downward with a mighty push that made the bothersome thump that had first caught his attention.


The shadowy creature descended, close enough for him to see its yellow eyes. Benoit deflected his gaze, hoping not to attract its attention. The beast sniffed and turned its wolf-like maw toward the prostitute, who was pulling the dress off to reveal a flat hairy stomach beneath a red padded bra. He still wore the mask.


Benoit, now no longer interested in the young Brasilian and his taut body, watched entranced, as drops of saliva fell from the beast’s fangs and ignited into yellow flames. With a moist cough, the beast, like a snake before a strike, recoiled. A heartbeat passed before yellowish flames spewed in a concerted thrust downward and engulfed the young man, melting his flesh in a private inferno, and burning a silhouette of the prostitute into the grass.


Benoit paralysed with fright, his nostrils blistered by the acrid smoke of the burning flesh, watched the beast recoil a second time. In awe he crossed himself and whispered: “Sweet Mary, holy Mother of God, a blue dragon.”

Okeanus

I have finished the first draft of my new novel Okeanus. Here is the synopsis.

Jacques Oiseau, a French psychologist, trained in Uppsala, Sweden, and a Capitaine of the Police Judiciare in Paris, profiles and tracks serial killers. Shortly after the death of his Swedish wife, Birgit, the Commissioner orders the grieving Oiseau to investigate a series of murders, involving arson and cannibalism.

Oiseau summons his team and throws himself into the investigation, which soon produces a witness. The witness warns Oiseau that he is not tracking a man but a Drac, a mythic creature from Celtic mythology.

With this bizarre information, Oiseau follows his leads and interviews witches, wizards, alchemists, and a beautiful representative of an ancient people called the Keltoi, the hidden ones.

The Keltoi directs Oiseau to an alchemist, who informs him that only a dragon hunter, who possesses and integrates a darkened soul shard, can rid the world of the Drac. The problem, he says, is that a darkened soul shard can only be obtained from a magus residing on one of the four elemental planes. Since, according to alchemical principles, the Drac comes from the watery plane, Okeanus, Oiseau must seek help from a magus there.

In exchange for a favor from the police, a witch creates a tear in the membrane separating the worlds and Oiseau falls, naked and unarmed, into an unbalanced watery world inhabited by a multitude of species, arising from or kin to dragons, and the humanoids that oppose them.

He does not speak the languages; he has no map or compass; and, once he arrives, Focalor, a denizen of the fiery plane, who knows of his quest and is determined to stop him, hunts him.

Vogel and the White Bull

Murder of Crow Books will be issuing a new edition of Vogel and the White Bull next year and I am currently working on the editor's changes and suggestions.

Below is another section concerning the function of images-one of the major themes of the book.

Elisa sipped on her beer.

“When I left Germany, I was working on a study of Heinrich’s head. It’s realistic, but with the usual tricks of Expressionism. For some reason now, I feel I could paint the same study with a new resonance. I think I understand a little more about the resonance of life. Before, I was painting what I saw physically; but now, I want to capture some of the mystery of what it is to be a Vogel or a Harding. I want to see beyond the skull into the psyche and beyond it to the spirit that animates the skull.”

“What does that mean?” asked Tracey. “I don’t get it.”

At that moment the waiter arrived with Vogel’s drink and Jonathan ordered another round for the table.

“It means, Tracey,” said Elisa, looking at her closely, “I’ve discovered something inside me that makes my vision of others numinous or mysterious. I’ve tapped into some new lode of energy that wants to get out through me and my art.”

“I still don’t get it,” reiterated Tracey sipping her margarita.

“We understand or are led by images. Sometimes the images are flat and inanimate. At other times, they are alive and electric, magical and mysterious, mystical or ineffable. Something out here in New Mexico has touched me and I have a sense of wonder I didn’t use to have. The other day, I met an Indian who told me a story and I could see the characters of the story. But I also felt there was something behind the story, the people were archetypes, expressing some greater meaning. I know these feelings emanate from me, but that doesn’t lessen the excitement or the beauty of the image. I also realize that certain images, because of cultural and personal reasons, are imbued with emotion or energy. I think I can reproduce those images in my art that will touch the observers in the same way.”

“Can you give me an example?” asked Jonathan who was very interested in Elisa and her new approach to her art.

Elisa thought for a moment and then said, “Suppose I paint a very realistic painting of a nude woman with a large snake across her body.”

“Well,” said Jonathan smiling, “it would be symbolic.”

“Yes,” she answered. “All of a sudden there would be all types of mythic, sexual, and religious associations from the image of the snake juxtaposed on to the nude woman.”

They were silent for a moment, thinking about the image, making their own associations, and painting their own picture in their imaginations.

A Cutting from Vogel and the White Bull-On Images

Looking at the painting across the room Elisa realized it was starting to come together. The multi-colored background that surrounded the man’s head looked like the patterns in the Persian rugs that lay on the floor of her mother’s home. It was odd how painting worked. She had started with a white canvas that she seasoned with a red wash. Then, she took a white crayon and drew the figure as precisely as she could. At this point, her painting looked realistic. She then began using white and black paints to define the subject’s physicality. From then on it was a matter of adding paint to create the emotional expressions she was trying to convey to the viewer. She did not call the images, but they came nonetheless, unbidden to the surface of her thought and found themselves upon the canvas. The images inhabited the four corners of the canvas, held in by the framing device. Sometimes one side was stronger than another. Imperceptibly, as she continued to work, the other side eventually grew in strength and a balance was maintained. It was through this process the images emerged and became plastic, more of a sculpture than a drawing. She loved the physicality of the work. The painting grew until a moment arrived when the work of art was complete. Sometimes, however, the work did not grow. Something went wrong and the creation took a wrong turn. At that moment, she would have to stop and scrape the paint from the canvas and begin again. It was usually a fault of consciousness. The error occurred usually at some moment when she began to think of the painting intellectually.

Raven-Noir

I am Traum
the raven of the tar pit.
I trapped
the blond lion.
I transfix him so long
in my avid attraction
that his yellow fur
falls and fades
into the sticky softness
of my flickering flesh.
His bones sink
into my somber soul
and settle like iron
shavings below. Someday
the pit will bubble
up a bone
or a fossilized feather.

Traum II

On Mars field at dusk
below the seven hills,
the trainer whistles
and a brace of twin retrievers
come, bounding
across dried winter grass,
their tongues lolling
from their black
and yellow snouts,
idiot’s evidence
of their subservience.
He throws a rubber ball
and they chase it.
First the yellows take it,
but the blacks roll them
onto their backs and steal
the red token.
They bite and growl,
tumble and gambol,
as the trainer scowls.
He whistles and snaps
his fingers in command.
They jump in obedience;
after all they are dogs.
This is not the end:
he carries a mixed pup
in his arms, while an assassin
waits on the Aventine.

Revenant V

Her blue veins
mark her parchment skin
like tattoo ink.
Her long fingers
press through tender grass,
stretching toward nests
of yellow straw.
The red hens brood
over brown eggs,
hidden on the border
of forest and field.
She hurries;
the fox and snake
arrive at dusk.
The hens flutter
as she lifts
them and spirits
away their eggs.
When the snake
appears, she calls
and he comes with hoe
and chops the copperhead
like cotton.
He hangs the skin
from the fence
as a warning
to the fox,
a premonition.

Revenant IV

Of all the ghostly emotions that haunt my house
his anger is the most tangible.
It hangs on the barn’s wall
like a coyote pelt skinned at dawn.
It barks at dusk and masquerades as order
and rules day’s dominance like a petty king.
Chaos lurks in the nails of its paws.
Chicken blood and feathers mask its snout.
It practices animal husbandry
to disguise its true intent.
Its silhouette in the summer’s stillness
harbingers the rant of winter’s tomorrow.

Traum

With his sinister hand, he drove the red Cadillac.
He smoked unfiltered camels with his right.
He named himself the Knight of Swords,
played Texas swing on the AM radio,
and lowered the black canvas top, like Jett Rink.

She warned him about the crocodiles.
They swarmed out of Africa and attacked the portcullis.
Imaginary damsels in distress were his weakness,
so he ordered steaks from Omaha and loaded
the red leather seats down with thawing boxes.

While the steaks rotted and turned an oily green
like a bottle fly’s eye, he pulled his Stetson
forward to avoid the wind.

Arriving at last, he honked
and she released the bridge’s German lock.
His Michelins squashed croc heads
as he entered the keep. She skipped
down gray stone stairs like a prom queen;
the poodle on her skirt emblematically black,
her hair bouncing jauntily in a pony tail.

She slide into the front seat,
flashing smooth legs and white panties,
scooting up against his denim thigh,
as the crocs boiled from the moat.

Driven mad by the smell of rotting meat
and exhaust, they scuttled on clattering claws
after the car until they hit asphalt on Route 66.

A note on Ihn Ritt die Nacht by Paul Celan

There is an image in Paul Celan’s Ihn ritt die nacht, which resonates with depth and meaning. For me, the image of the orange in the third stanza exemplifies the concept of the primordial word, which energizes and mythologizes poetry.

Here is the original with my translation.

Ihn ritt die Nacht

The night rode him, he came to himself,
the orphan’s overall was the flag,

no more detours
it rode him straight-

It is, it is, as if the oranges stood in the hedge,
as if, so ridden, he wore nothing
but his
first
birth-marked
secret-speckled
skin.




Ihr ritt die Nacht, er war zu sich gekommen,
der Waisenkittel war die Fahn,

kein Irrlauf mehr,
es ritt ihn grad

Es ist, es ist, als stünden in Liguster die Orangen,
als hätt der so Gerittene nichts an
als seine
erste
muttermalige, ge
heimnisgesprenkelte
Haut.


What comes first the primordial word or image?

When I first read this poem, I immediately focused on the orange, standing in the hedge, shining like a beacon in green, cool darkness. The orange does not hang; it stands. Although it stands boldly within the boundary of the hedge, it glows like a full moon on a dark night. It is hidden and yet it shines.

The orange is an anomaly, which functions as a beacon, calling us, filling our mind and imagination with its vibrancy, its color. From this initial attraction, our imagination moves to the other senses to create a sense of weight and depth. We touch the rough peel of the orange, we smell its citrus aroma, we taste its tart sweetness, we chew its thick pulp, and we suck the slick pips that slide around our tongue. Our mouths water as our eyes linger on the glowing orange, which stands like a prisoner within the hedge.

The Trap

He lays the trap
on gray green moss.
He pries the sharpened claws
open until he hears the click
of the German lock.
He places raw meat
onto the silver spring.
He hides in an orange bush
and waits for her to approach.
He smells the Valencia oranges ripen.
He feels the earth tumble and turn.
He sees the dappled green mint leaf
reflect the last ray of a weakened sun.
As he sleeps, the moon waxes and wanes.
He swells and bursts like a peach
fallen onto wet autumn clay.

Revenant III

The sole meal
we prepared
in five years
was boiled lobster,
which was apropos,
because our thing
was to lie on sugary sand
until her hair bleached white
and my native blood boiled
through my veneer.
We cooked the clay
until it glistened
and hardened,
then I extended my claw,
inviting her to crack
it with a steel vise.

Quelle II

The Valencia orange hangs
on Celan’s line,
swelling
his syntax
into its own myth
until it falls,
sweetly
onto wet clay,
which whirls
on wheels,
descending
to an emotion.

Quelle

Silence
and sentence,
twin snakes,
enwrapped
and ensorcelled
by Jacobs’ staff.

Quicksilver

We grind cinnabar
and sparks
scatter from the lathe.
We slit the snakeskin
and lubricate the dragon scales,
their bright moistness
harbingers
a spring space
of late containment.

Lichtung II

The primordial word
springs from a stone well,
dug by a grandfather
with an iron shovel,
seeking syntax.
It bubbles forth myth
and flirts with thought’s force,
which could be order
or fascistic desire.
Unlike Leni’s portraits
of youth’s beauty
or some metaphysician’s
game of goose stepping
rhyme and metronomic feet,
the sentence
must find
its own meadow
or clearing
within the black forest.

Visita

I was born
under the sign of the Lion
and by all reports
I should have followed the Sun King
but on the cusp
I slipped from the curb
and twisted through my fall
into the crow caverns
of the Moon Queen.
I lay in her sweet arms
for a decade,
listening to the foot pad
of the blue dragon,
fearing what I would become.
When a child
I sat with my father
in an old theater
on the square
and cheered Errol Flynn,
the greatest puer,
charge down Red Mountain.
As a man,
I channel the Hunger Artist
and intuit-
Kavka means jackdaw.

Couple

After chaos expelled them,
she contained him,
absorbing his anxiety,
madness and aloneness.
He reciprocated
by constructing a home
in a cave,
carrying a sharpen spear,
its tip hardened
in stolen fire,
and hunting black bison.
In the age of order,
they stand alone,
uncontained,
twitching
from a palsy
of self involvement
and modernity.

Electronic Age

Before connectivity
he secured
his yellow claws
in the center
of the ice.
Now,
the floe
melts
and the seals
disappear.
To be alone
in frigid silence
was paradise.

Verwandlung

In the center
he smeared
his body
with black mud
to protect
against flies
and the sun.
He floated
neither up
nor down
in the slough,
praying for metamorphosis.

Foucault's Pendulum

The rule of one
breaks many.
Chaos mourns the alone,
as its priests plot
against Akhenaten
the hermaphrodite.
The one
now dead
becomes many
until he slithers
from the silence,
stuttering
sibilant sounds
to his staff.

Austria 1782

With a black line,
sharp as a Cossack’s sword,
the bureaucrat
scratched him
from the Levant.
A raven
pecked
his brown eyes
in a dream,
birthing
Raben,
his second self.

55

Journeying north
he turns right.
The mystery
yields left
toward resistance.
The gauche
usurped
steal a march
through the strait
gate.

Stormtrooper

He demands spurs.
Their clanging spares
no one creation.
His coming
trumpets
forest’s spread
across volcanic rock.
Order adorns
with ash and steel.

Wasteland

Green stalks press
through sienna clay,
stretching to yellow light.
Khaos flowers bloom blue.
Their pistils
dust copper pollen
on gunmetal.
Silver spurs jingle
as he rides north
through shadowed valleys.
His iron-capped rod
comforts him
as he finds beauty
here.

Spear Point

At the rugged red waste,
the Knight of Swords
dismounts progress’ horse.
Salamanders slither
beneath iron shavings.
Volcanic ash falls
on armor,
as the armies
of order
march forward
like machines.

Le Revenant Deux

Before she bled to death
in an old porcelain tub
with claw feet
and a multitude
of scratches,
in student housing,
like a Roman matron
in disgrace,
she published
precious poems
about carnivals
and clowns
in little magazines,
flung about
by smaller presses.

He lived sixty years
longer than she,
singing dark songs
about shamans
cloaked in parrot feathers.

Each day,
dancing on one foot
before a jaundiced flame,
he swallows
her sword of madness
and digests the darkness
her bright brogue disguised.

Irony

The law-abiding crave
the spoken crudeness
of the Magians.
They sneak away
to the towers
or seek in shadows
the secret shops
and chambers
of the poets,
who wear crow feathers
and dance on one foot
or the other
to the beat of the drum.
The ones who speak
the magic words
enjamb the emphasis
at the most inopportune time
and place secrets
in sleeping ears,
awakening the sibilance
of the silence
in their shadowed stance.

La Parole

The night hums with a heat
that embraces southern stars
that glitter above moist haze.
She in a word is a revenant
who escapes her captivity
to whisper primordial verse
softly into my left ear.
Her incantation
returns me to the crossroad,
where the sandal shod
erected a herm.
Soon, the caravans
congregate
and translate
the runes and hieroglyphs
of Babel.

Wille zur Macht

Loosened from Khaos’ grip
by her toothy bite
of the pomegranate’s pulpy skin,
he pondered his singular way
to the Latinate’s southern will.
To align his thoughts,
he danced his myth
in his ebony feathers
and pounded python skin
stretched over hollowed green gourd
until the wintry sun set
in a salted sea
and the leviathan spewed
a multitude of drops,
scattering like stars.

Huis Clos

On a red sand beach,
beastmen purse swollen lips
and blow a mordant moan
against the sweet slash of coral conch.
Bedecked in ebon feathers,
he sits and thinks
of her will
that penetrated
the quotidian membrane
to grasp the ruby fruit.
Her fingers tore them
from Khaos’ grim grasp,
loosing them,
alone and voiceless,
creating from nothingness
something that resembled fabric,
plastic and printed,
pathetic, yet irrefutable,
serviceable, yet infinite.

The Mason

In a single sinister voice
they sent a silent slave
to seek him
in his solitude.

Startled, he surfaced
in their muddled mist.
Confused by their voices,
he followed them
to their throne room.
He wore a cotton singlet
and a black leather apron.
In his bare arms
he carried
a steel square,
a bronze trowel,
and a ball of cotton string.

They cheered his mathematics,
then led him through narrow streets
to a secluded clearing,
where, using a marble slab,
he drew a diagram
on rice papyrus
with a goose quill
and octopus ink.

Finished,
he drove silver stakes
into red clay
with an iron hammer.

He stretched string
stuttering a sibilant sound.

They heard a command
for water, manure, clay and straw.
They set the slaves to stamping;
they fired ceramic kilns,
while he dreamed
the dimensions
of the dome.

"Cave Gossip" accepted by Permafrost

I wish to thank Brian Keenan and the other editors at Permafrost, the University of Alaska's literary magazine, for accepting "Cave Gossip" for a May/June publication. "Cave Gossip" is one of the longer poems in Petroglyphs.

Yet Another from Khaos' Magic

Fauna

Her bright brogue
warned me
to stay
upon the clay.
But wolfbane,
yellow green,
lured me
off the way.
I wandered
until snow fell
in frail flakes
and frigid ferns
snapped.
Time blanketed
sleeping bears.

One more from Khaos' Magic

Busker

He sings
the cosmic egg
on the tube’s platform;
his lyre case open
on greasy cement.

He composes lyrics
about fourfold
worlds, while others
drop crumpled bills
upon green felt.

His vision becomes words;
his words become worlds.
They ebb and flow
between the void
and Thoth’s light.

Zipporah shucks clams
with her flint knife.
Her son’s blood
mediates chaos
and appeases the groom.

Another from Khaos' Magic

The Staff’s Snake

With a single sinister stroke
his staff’s snake staggers
law’s stern progress.
Its blunt blow
breaks a clay pot
thrown by red hands
bronze-aged by an orange sun.
He stammers a sibilant message:
Khaos’ flood drowns
Babel’s language.
He awaits the primordial word
to slip past paralyzed lips.

Two from Khaos' Magic

Zipporah’s Flint

She murmurs:
magic managed
demands blood.
She scrapes
her son’s skin
away with a flint
and wipes blood
on her husband’s feet,
loosing Khaos
from the desert
and paying passage
to Pharoah’s plague.



Impedimenta

He slowly speaks,
meaning he hesitates
between thought and word.
He stutters
and stammers
like the Púca.
Yet, even with this malady,
he transforms stored visions
through mediation
of his brother’s tongue
into a magic rod.

Lichtung

When he arrived
from the desert,
his feet
covered in blood,
slow of speech
and tongue,
he met his elder,
his brother,
the shining light,
the mediator,
the messenger,
equal to Thoth,
in language
and argument,
who agreed,
in a clearing,
to speak,
and translate
his words
into magic.

Aaron's Sorcery

to Michael Moorcock

Reading primordial words,
red runes carved
and stained
on polished burl,
he shifts his shepherd’s staff
into his sinister hand.

He casts it onto ferrous rock,
where it slithers into silver shade,
seeking its chaotic source,
stunned into being
by a steady whisper.

"Filet" from Petroglyphs

He slaps the silver trout
flat upon the Times,
wetting the newsprint
and blackening it
like a Cajun chef.
He filets
it stealthily
with sharpened steel,
dividing the shimmering scales
and extracting wizened bones.
He sets it
aside salty flesh,
a skinny doppelganger
to fertilize the roses.

Michael Moorcock-Literary Addiction

I have a new obsession and I am adding it to my list of subjects that make manifest an insatiable desire to know everything there is to know about Paul Celan, Ted Hughes, Carl Jung, Rollo May, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Hermann Hesse, Jean Paul Sartre, Iris Murdoch, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Mann, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, the surrealists, Max Beckmann, German and French history, and epic fantasy.

This new obsession possesses an odd name-Michael Moorcock-and supposedly lives near me in Texas. He is a Brit, living in Bastrop, but I don’t believe it. Oh, I believe that-maybe in an alternate universe-this Brit lives in Texas, but not really.

How did this obsession begin? How did this obsession creep up on me and why haven’t I discovered this guy before this late date? I mean he is my kind of guy. He likes to read the classics. He loves comics, Edgar Rice Burroughs, science fiction, games, and epic fantasy. He mentions Nabokov, a previous obsession, and he seems to know a lot about history, especially European history. He began publishing in the sixties-the period when I would read one or two science fiction novels a day-so how did his work escape my attention? I can’t figure it out. Maybe it is because his novels have a dream-like quality to them, which would have turned me off in the sixties, when I loved the science fiction of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. As I read him now, I am reminded of Céline and William S. Burroughs, writers which I didn’t initially appreciate.

Nevertheless, I now know who he is. I backed into him, through a writer, who I now know borrowed heavily from him-David Gemmell. But I didn’t read him until I saw a blurb on his Pyat series, a blurb that intrigued me because the plot of the novel seemed similar to what I was trying to do in my unpublished novel-The Blond Beast. So I picked up a copy of the first novel in his Pyat series-Babylon Endures-in one of those marvelous British paperbacks and devoured it in one or two sittings. It is a picaresque tale of a self-hating Jew (maybe), living in Russia in the early Twentieth Century, trying to survive the Russian Revolution. As an aside, I read Martin Amis' Koba the Dread the same week and these two books made wonderful companions.

I am now a full-blown Moorcock addict, as hooked on his literary drug, as Elric or Pyat are addicted to their drugs of choice.

Now here is where it gets good. There is an added bonus. Many of his books are out of print and impossible to find. I am an inveterate book collector. I am never happier than when I am tracking a book by its dusty scent. So what do I have? I have a great writer, whose books have disappeared. So let the search begin; and the reading; and the writing.

I intend posting several short essays on Moorcock as I track his books and devour them like some slime monster in the wicked passages of an ancient city of the multiverse.

Two More from Petroglyphs

Talos

Born below the ash trees,
in their tarnished shadows,
hammered into being
in the heat of the lower level,
half machine, half bull,
he runs, a warden of the isolated isle,
bright in his bronze skin,
three times daily through sugary sand
at the command of his master, the mage.
And in his mechanical gait
he crushes seashells,
his feet whitened by the gulls’ droppings,
singing his forged songs of servitude,
shining on the edge of the surging sea,
scaring sullen seafarers.



Awakening

His black crow feathers
ignite into red flames,
melting golden bees’ wax
between the pinions.
He falls to his center,
drawn downward by word’s gravity,
until he lies like a silver stone
unconcealed in the clearing.

Two from Petroglyphs by Keith Harvey

Fishing

Cast upon impulse
a hand-made nymph
teases silver trout.
They pierce shadow green waters,
projecting their javelin selves
toward a breathless line.


Smoothest Stone

A line without end is breathless
Euclid


The smoothest stone weighs
heavy in the bed of a trout’s stream.
Silver scales shimmer
sanded by breathless time,
a spear’s head thrust into being,
resting on our meridian,
defining our shadows
against the word’s gravity.

Thoughts on Primordial Words, while reading Celan

Jung talks about images arising from the unconscious mind and often quotes a phrase that he inscribed on the lintel of the door to his Küsnacht hideaway-vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit (called or not called the gods will be there). These images, arriving unbidden, are sometimes archetypal, filled with emotion and weight, or primordial, fresh and newly born. Silence, meditation, or dreams open up a space for primordial or archetypal language to emerge, just as images and symbols arise from the unconscious. If we can capture these images in their freshness, newly arisen from the unconscious, and use them in poetry, then these images, now words, feel numinous within the poems' landscape. Primordial language, then, is felt, heard, and seen. It is emotive in quality, with weight as its predominant characteristic. Primordial language is like a stone emerging from thick green loam of an ancient pagan land, a stone among the scree of the Wortlandschaft (Celan). Jung employs a similar geographic metaphor to describe the unconscious. Robert Brockway in his biography Young Carl Jung, Continuum International Publishing Group (September 1997), wrote that "the prime source of Jung's concept of the collective unconscious was probably his idea of the geology of the human personality or Bodenbeschafftenheit." Each new word that springs up into consciousness resonates with feeling, which is felt through desire, desire for the sacred, the numinous, and the primordial. These primordial words are, in effect, incarnations of the spirit that are ultimately made flesh, arriving on pigeon feet (Heidegger and Celan), from the unknown, moving toward the known, and then settling into everydayness before disappearing in plain sight, like a stone beneath our feet. Once they disappear, we miss them and feel extreme Sehnsucht.

Der Riss, Etching, Geographical Upheaval in Celan

As we proceed with our analysis of the second poem of Atemwende, Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main 1967), I believe it is important to focus on two concepts-the physical process of etching and Heidegger’s use of the German word, der Riss, which refers us back to our discussion of Pyramus and Thisbe and propels us forward into Heidegger’s concept of art, a concept that Celan engaged, studied, incorporated, and debated for over ten years. Further, held within the word-der Riss-is a semantic connection to the concepts of divide, tear, and furrow, which rhetorically connects the second poem in the collection to the third and associates a tear, a furrow (die Rille) or a rift with the actual process of etching through a figurative comparing of the rift in the seam of Brotland that forms the Lebensberg with the physical processes of the art. According to the catalogue of the National Gallery of art -Etching is an intaglio technique whereby marks are bitten into the metal plate by chemical action. The plate is coated with a ground (either hard or softground) impervious to acid through which the artist draws to expose the metal. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath until the open lines of areas are sufficiently bitten. Finally, the ground is removed and the plate inked and printed. Etching is commonly used in combination with drypoint, aquatint, and other intaglio processes. The language employed in this definition seems to connect metaphorically with seismic activities that cause mountains to spring from the earth and locate some of the imagery in the world/earth dichotomy. Further, the divide between the mountain and the land creates both a physical barrier (geographical) and a figurative (concealed/unconcealed) barrier between the “ich” and the “du” that is ultimately juxtaposed metaphorically between the states of sleep and waking.

Synecdoche, Abtasten, Paradox in Paul Celan

The second poem of Paul Celan’s collection, Atemwende, Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main 1967), begins with a paradox and a nod at the etchings that his wife includes in the work. The first line -Von geträumtem geätzt (from the undreamed etched)- presents the first problem of the poem. We go on to read that the undreamed etches out the Lebensberg from Brotland. The image of a Brotland/breadland refers back somewhat obliquely to the Maulbeerbaum of the previous poem, especially when we remember that the mulberry belongs to the same family as breadfruit. So from this image of bread and food, we are also reminded of paper and the poet, which makes sense in light of the fact that the first line also transports us to the realm of fairytales. The first paradox lies in the fact that fairy tales are the product of dreams; however, it is the undreamed images that etch Brotland and create the Lebensberg. Undreamed images must be experienced images, images experienced while awake. However, the “ich” of the poem is asleep and he is attempting to awaken himself.

Before we continue, I think it is important to make some associations and to identify certain allusions, which I will not fully explore in this post. Brotland seems to indicate a physicality, an image that relates to the body-either as a living entity or a corpse. Celan was a great student of both the Jewish Bible as well as the Christian and I believe that Brotland refers to the sacrament of the body and the use of unleavened bread as a substitute for the body-not of Christ’s body here but of the bodies of those who died in the Holocaust. Further, I believe that Lebensberg is both an allusion to Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg and a reference to Heidegger’s Lebensphilosophie. Finally, Brotland is the land of the dead, where the dead wander sleeplessly and un-dreaming. Ironically, the Lebensberg emerges from the land of the dead, a land from which the "ich” struggles to awaken.

The first line then seems to signal the struggle of the dead to reawaken and, in effect, be resurrected to life; however, this transformation must be “sussed out.” This symbolic reading must be refined because it is not the dead that arises but the poet. It is the poet who must probe with his fingers to awaken toward the “du.” Consequently, in further investigations, we must focus on the poet and his “sussing out” the darkness of Brotland and the caverns of the Lebensberg. To do this involves an investigation of the methodology of un-concealing the concealed, which involves ultimately transformation or rebirth. This process is contained in Celan’s use of the verb abtasten, which means to feel, to scan, or to suss out. It has a further meaning, which might be used effectively here, and that is "to palpate." To palpate the body fits our view that Brotland is the body or corpse, where body acts as a synecdoche for a people.

Synesthesia, Snow, and Sussing Out in Celan

In the second poem of Paul Celan’s collection, entitled Atemwende, Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main 1967), he creates an image that relies on the use of the scientific concept of synesthesia in a surrealist image of eyes on the fingertips of the “ich.” He writes Aug an jedem der Finger,/ abtaste nach/einer Stelle (eye on each finger,/ feeling for a place). Through the probing finger the “I” seeks to awaken toward the “you.” Once again we have the poem’s protagonist seeking illumination and union with the other. This time the search is conducted through touch, which will awaken the “I” to the light cast by die helle/ Hungerkerze im Mund (the bright hunger candle in the mouth). Through touch, sight is possible through the light cast by the hunger candle. Implicit in the poem is imagery connected to “mining,” darkness, sight/blindness, food, baking, feeding, silence and creation through reduction, as presented by the use of the word “etching.”

In a previous blog I pointed out that I considered the collection as a unified whole. If my theory is correct, there should be some rhetorical unification to the first poem “Du Darfst,” which I discussed in length in a previous blog, with the meaning of the second poem “Von Ungetraumtem."

Over the past few weeks I have been contemplating the use of the word “snow” in the first poem and I believe that “snow” conveys “silence.” The “ich” says du darfst mich getrost/mit Schnee bewirten. Over the Christmas holidays I was in northern New Mexico, where I was caught in a blizzard, and trapped in a hotel for three days. On a Thursday night, it began to snow big fat wet flakes. At first it was fun walking through the plaza; however, the snow fell at the rate of one inch per hour and soon everything was covered in a thick white blanket. Eventually, all movement stopped and people disappeared from the streets. The starkest result of this freak storm was silence. I thought of Celan’s poem and I wondered if the snow in the first poem silenced the poet, who in the summer had walked with the mulberry tree. Later, I discovered another poem, entitled “Mit Wechselndem Schüssel.” In this poem Celan talks of a house, where the snow of what’s silenced is driven.

Let’s assume for a moment that the poet has been silenced in the first poem; however, in the second poem he awakens and seeks the “you.” Or on a grander scale, let’s assume that a German poet, through the Nazi period, has had his mother tongue defiled and desecrated, and now is trying to probe his way to a new language. The process is tedious and difficult, like being lost in a mountain, in a tunnel with no light, where he must feel his way with his fingers.

In the next blog, I will continue with a discussion of this poem and focus on the verb “abtasten.”

Pyramus, Thisbe, and Paul Celan

One of the first poems of Paul Celan's that I translated was Wir Lagen, a short poem found in the collection entitled Lichtzwang, Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main, 1970). It is this poem that provides the title to the collection and which, I believe, evokes one of Celan's primary themes-the inability to connect with the other in the face of extreme longing. The other in these poems is unidentified and usually simply appears as "Du." However, the other could be a lover, the mother, God, the Self (in Jungian terms), or Being (in Heideggerian terminology). It is not really important who the "Du" is; instead, the emotions that weld up within the poems, arising from desire, loss, sehnsucht, or mystical yearning, illustrate an almost transcendental need to connect. Similarities in theme exist in the poetry of Rumi and, perhaps more importantly and precisely, to The Song of Solomon.

The following is my translation of Wir Lagen:

We lay
already deep in the shrubs, when you
finally crawled along
but we could not
darken over to you:
it ruled
Lightconstraint.

In Celan, some barrier always exists that frustrates the "ich's" seeking for and uniting with the "Du." In this regard, I believe that the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe provides an important metaphor or trope for Celan and I further believe that he alludes to the myth in the poem, Du Darfst, the first poem in the collection, entitled Atemwende, SuhrkampVerlag (Frankfurt am Main 1967), in order to prepare the reader for an employment of one of his major themes.

The myth of Pyramus and Thisbe emphasizes desire, the frustration of desire, confusion, misunderstanding, loyalty, and the proximate relatedness of thanatos with eros. These themes are established quickly as illustrated by the following quotation from Thomas Bullfinch:

Pyramus was the handsomest youth, and Thisbe the fairest maiden, in all Babylonia, where Semiramis reigned. Their parents occupied adjoining houses; and neighbourhood brought the young people together, and acquaintance ripened into love. They would gladly have married, but their parents forbade. One thing, however, they could not forbid- that love should glow with equal ardour in the bosoms of both. They conversed by signs and glances, and the fire burned more intensely for being covered up.

In the wall that parted the two houses there was a crack, caused by some fault in the structure. No one had remarked it before, but the lovers discovered it. What will not love discover! It afforded a passage to the voice; and tender messages used to pass backward and forward through the gap. As they stood, Pyramus on this side, Thisbe on that, their breaths would mingle. "Cruel wall," they said, "Why do you keep two lovers apart? But we will not be ungrateful. We owe you, we confess, the privilege of transmitting loving words to willing, ears." Such words they uttered on different sides of the wall; and when night came and they must say farewell, they pressed their lips upon the wall, she on her side, he on his, as they could come no nearer.

As we progress in our discussion of Celan's poetry, we should remember the wall separating the lovers and the crack in that wall that provides the means of communication, imperfect though it might be.

Paper Making, Etching, and the Mulberry in Celan

Paul Celan’s poetry, more often than not, causes me to slow down, to meditate on the images, and once I think that I have grasped their meaning, they surprise me and turn me in another direction. This surprise usually springs from a trap of images. In reading and re-reading the first poem of Atemwende, SuhrkampVerlag (Frankfurt am Main 1967), I thought I had tripped the spring and that the trap of meaning was sprung; however, through an accident really, I discovered yet another meaning behind the word-Maulbeerbaum. I happened onto a book that I read in 1965, when I was in middle school, entitled The Black Rose (1945), by the Canadian novelist, Thomas Costain. In that novel Costain describes, in some detail, Chinese paper making techniques, which depend upon the use of mulberry bark. Suddenly the line-sooft ich Schulter an Schulter/ mit dem Maulbeerbaum-ushers us into the realm of the literary. Perhaps, Celan is saying that “You may celebrate me because I have walked shoulder to shoulder with paper-with the page, with poetry.

Nevertheless, even though you may celebrate him for his literary excursion, the “leaf” still cries out. We know from prior explications that "leaf," often refers to the poet; consequently, we have yet another possible meaning for the poem. We also have the obvious connection between "Blatt" from tree and "Blatt (leaf) of paper. In fact, the use of the word Blatt in regard to paper and writing is as rich or richer in German than in English.

Finally, as an aside and for future consideration, etching is an image that permeates the collection-Atemwende. Etching and papermaking are handmade arts that have a physicality to them, which I believe, as images, thematically emerge.

"Mulberry" in Paul Celan's "Du Darfst"

In my last post, I discussed primarily the first two lines of the first poem of Paul Celan’s Atemwende, SuhrkampVerlag (Frankfurt am Main 1967). In our discussion, I focused on “snow” and the verb “bewirten.” Now I turn, to the last four lines, which, through the image of “summer,” “Mulberry tree” and “leaf,” stand in opposition to the first two lines but also offer a reason, a rationale, and an explanation for the coming celebration in “snow.” Additionally, Celan’s rhetorical choice to use a “colon” between the first two lines and the last four demonstrates his grammatical intent to have the last four lines explain, express, define, resolve, and, most importantly precede, the first two lines.

In temporal and causative terms, the first two lines precede the action of the last four and, thereby, figuratively put the cart before the horse. In other words, the grammar of the poem actually states that in this thought-“because I often strode shoulder and shoulder with the mulberry tree, you may, if you wish, regale me with snow.” However, another phrase, modifying mulberry tree, twists the meaning and adds perhaps a further explanation to the expression of the first two lines. As the “ich” walks with the mulberry tree on an equal footing, the mulberry’s youngest leaf “screamed, shrieked, screeched, moaned, or called out.” The poem begs the question-did the youngest leaf cry out because the “ich” walked with the mulberry tree or did the “ich” hear the youngest leaf cry out because he often walked with the mulberry tree.

The action of the poem, like nearly every other Celan poem, is charged by his use of surrealistic images. Here, one is regaled or celebrated with snow; one walks shoulder to shoulder with a mulberry tree; and a leaf shrieks or cries out. Celan, however, is not a surrealist, although he uses their techniques. I would argue that there is a clear meaning beneath his images, drawing him closer to the symbolists than to the surrealists. Here, he chooses the mulberry tree for several reasons. One, the mulberry tree exists only in the tropics and warmer climates. Two, the mulberry tree grows fast when young and slows down as it ages. Three, the mulberry leaves are tasty and are used as nourishment for silk worms. Four, according to Ovid the mulberry tree is connected to the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe, a tale of tragic love. Five, the mulberry tree is a member or the moraceae family, which also includes the breadfruit, an image that appears again in this collection.

In the next post, I will continue our discussion by applying each one of the five reasons to the poem in an attempt to approach its meaning and show how the misunderstanding between Pyramus and Thisbe is repeated in images contained in other Celan poems.

Entry into Paul Celan's "Atemwende"

The first line in prose or the first poem in a collection of poetry should establish the tone and the theme of the entire work and provide a way for the reader to enter the work. So, when I read someone else’s prose or poetry, I pay attention to the first sentence or the first poem that is, in effect, the first stitch in the artist’s written tapestry. In other words, I hold its beginning throughout the reading.

In this regard, I recently spent an inordinate amount of time reading and re-reading the first poem in Paul Celan’s Atemwende, Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main 1967) and, more particularly, reading and re-reading the first two lines- Du darfst mich getrost/ mit Schnee bewirten (You may confidently/entertain me with snow)-in order to find an entry or a hand hold to my reading. For me Celan’s use of the verb-bewirten-is a significant clue and key to the work. The word means to feed someone; however, it also means to entertain through providing a meal. In other words, the verb holds a concept that may be expressed thus: “you may take me to dinner and entertain me with food and drink.” Therefore, the verb conveys a sense that the “ich” is receiving nourishment and entertainment at the hands of the “du.” This entertainment follows a summer, where the “ich” walked with the “Maulbeerbaum” (the mulberry tree), and the youngest “leaf cries out.” In winter we find the “ich” celebrating or more precisely allowing himself to be “celebrated” by the “du” through snow. From this juxtaposition of season and the emergence of snow, Celan presents an end-summer followed by autumn, dying leaves, and the fall of snow-and the offer of the “ich” to be celebrated through a frigid rebirth after seasonal “death.” The image of snow is an allusion to the time of the camps where there was little or no actual nourishment, only ash and snow to fill the mouths of the starving prisoners. So, perhaps, he is saying that he will allow himself to be celebrated through snow, an icy nourishment but nourishment nevertheless.

In another poem, Eis, Eden, Celan employs a similar image-Das Eis wird auferstehen,/eh sich die Stunde schliesst (The ice will be resurrected/ before the hour concludes). What does this thread signify to me in my exploration of this Celan collection?

As a result of its images and allusions, I will look for themes of rebirth after metaphorical images of decay and death and the mechanism and means of that allowed or consented to resurrection. In other words, this strategy will furnish me a means in which to enter Celan’s poems, which are difficult at best and sometimes opaque.

Next time, I will discuss the meaning of the mulberry tree.

"Preamble" by Keith Harvey

Preamble


Spring shifts into his summer,
one year after their garden,
theirs because it was theirs to name and define.
Now, he sits on the edge of a cornfield
dressed in his crow feathers,
listening to the wind rustling among dried leaves,
mice seeking desiccated kernels among weeds.
She tell his first-born,
marked by a blood red scar
that he is an agrarian
and that the cornfield is his.
In her magical thinking,
she sacrifices corn to Him,
as an eternal return.
She holds the past in cupped hands
and her son drinks her memories
of green days naked.
But he has another plan,
a quest that seeks their future
in deeper depths.
For this he needs a song.
He chants and rocks,
transcending the sand.
She hears only the crow caw.

"Coyote and the Witch"-Conclusion

5.

At dusk, Vogel sat at the brasserie on the Isle St Louis, watching a bateau mouche loaded with tourists slowly pass the island, while he waited for Coyote.

He had been unable to find the pup, although he smelled his scent on the wind and he was sure that with the bruja gone Coyote would not have any trouble locating the boy. In fact, Vogel doubted seriously that Coyote would show up or pay the price for finding the pup.

As the sun set and a cold wind blew off of the Seine, Vogel ordered an armagnac and a cigar. At seven, when diners began to arrive, Vogel stood and started home. On a narrow street without any curb for pedestrians Vogel heard a scooter rumbling over the ancient cobblestones and he pressed himself against the side of an old building.

The scooter stopped at his elbow and he heard, “want a ride home, wolf?”

Vogel turned and smiled at Branwen who was dressed in a tight red dress that matched her helmet. A matching red sweater was tied around her shoulders.

“You look lovely.”

“Stop it old man and get on.”

She delivered him to the door of his apartment and as he climbed off, she said, “Coyote found his pup and they are on their way home.”

Vogel leaned forward and kissed her on each cheek. She turned the scooter around and said, “It is time you learned to fly.”

He laughed and said, “I thought I was a wolf.”

“Do you know what the ancients called the raven?”

He shook his head. She continued with a shake of her head that reminded him of the bird on the dresser in the hotel room, “The wolf bird, Vogel, the wolf bird.”

With that she drove off and the old man punched in his code and the door of his apartment building opened.


The End

"Coyote and the Witch"-Part Four

4.

After lunch Vogel walked home. It took him almost an hour and half but since he was shot twelve years ago in Berlin, he always walked, unless it was bad weather or too far to go in a couple of hours. He intended to keep going no matter what was thrown at him-age, bullets, knives, witches, or coyotes.

At eleven that evening he was reading Thomas Mann’s Joseph and his Brothers. He had already fallen asleep once and he was nodding off in his chair, when the buzzer on the ground floor sounded. He walked over and buzzed the person in. After a few minutes there was a faint knock at his door. He opened it to Branwen.

She was wearing black leather pants, gloves, boots and an American motorcycle jacket. Her cheeks were flushed and her black eyes twinkled.

“You found her?”

“Get this, she is checked in at the Hilton across the street from the Tour d’Eiffel. My birds spotted her at ten tonight crossing the street. She has a powerful spell up but they were able to track her to the hotel after they discovered her emerging from the Bois du Bolougne in coyote skin.”

“Did they see the pup?”

“No, we haven’t been able to find him. I think she sensed us searching for her and changed into her human form to escape us.”

“She is not a coyote.”

“No, she is a shape shifter but she’s human. Sort of human.”

“What should we do?”

“Get a good night’s sleep and be at her hotel at eight tomorrow morning. Somehow get in her room and open a window. I will take care of everything else.”

“How do I know which room to go to?”

“She’s checked in as Mrs. Rose Red. Cute isn’t it?”

She kissed him on each cheek and he smelled her scent, which seemed to be a combination of chocolate and musk.

As he was closing the door, she turned and said, “I almost forgot. When you get the window open, blow this.” She handed him a silver whistle. It was about two inches long and a quarter of inch around. He took and blew into it softly. He heard nothing but she covered her ears and said crossly, “are you crazy? You will have every crow in Paris sitting on your ledge if you blow that thing.”

She smiled and then walked toward the elevator, pulling her red helmet onto her head.

Vogel slept fitfully and rose early. He took the first metro across town and was sitting in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel at seven forty. He did not know how he was going to find the woman in the huge hotel. He had walked up and down the lobby sniffing deeply, trying to pick up her scent, but he discerned nothing but the usual hotel odors, some of which were quite unpleasant.

He went to the flower shop next to the Hermes Boutique in the lobby and ordered a dozen roses for Madame Rose Red. The shop girl looked at him as if he was mad but he assured her that was the woman’s name. He paid in cash and then returned to the lobby.

At eight fifteen, a young man wearing green pants with a yellow strip on the legs and a tan jacket emerged from the flower shop carrying a vase with a dozen red roses and walked to the elevator. Vogel jumped up as best he could with his leg and followed the man onto the elevator. He pushed four and Vogel said in English, “same as me.” The boy smiled.

Vogel followed the boy down the long hall, walking slowly, exaggerating his handicap. The boy stopped at room 426 and Vogel continued past him and turned at the end of the hall into another bank of rooms. He waited until he heard the boy leave and then returned to Room 426 and knocked.

The witch pulled the door open, her face contorted with rage at being disturbed again. Vogel knew immediately that she suspected a trap and he noted that she was dressed to go out.

“Who are you?” She leaned toward him and sniffed. With her so close, Vogel detected a hint of pollen, mesquite, baby powder, and desert flowers on her cheek. Against his will, he felt himself becoming tremendously attracted to the woman and he wondered if this was part of her magic.

She had disguised herself as a forty something French woman, with short black hair, tanned skin and hazel eyes. She was dressed in a gray skirt and a white silk blouse. A tailored matching gray jacket hung on the chair in front of the dresser and a Birkin bag rested on the chair.

She stepped back and examined him closely, so closely that Vogel felt an urge to turn away from her gaze.

“I see a man, a human man, but I detect both the scent of a wolf and a bird, a rook, I think. You must have ancient blood. You don’t know who or what you are do you? Oh, I can see a little training around the edges and I suspect that you are good at finding things and maybe solving problems but you have a violent side that takes over sometimes and when it does there is blood everywhere. I understand that side. I don’t hide from it but you do. I can see it.”

Vogel said nothing because he did not want to give away anything to the woman. Her power came from her knowledge and the more information she had the greater control she could exercise over him.

“Are you a shape shifter or a shaman?”

He did not answer.

“What’s your name?” She crossed over to the dresser and pulled on her jacket. When he did not answer, she shrugged and said, “You are not unattractive but I have business to attend to and I cannot waste time on you.”

“I am here for Coyote.”

She paused and then sat down, “I thought I smelled him in Madrid. He got close, real close.”

She laughed and pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from her purse. “He thought he bested me but he was wrong. He is such a funny character, everything that he attempts backfires on him.”

“I want the pup.”

“You can have him if you bring Coyote to me.”

“Now. Do you want to see him now?”

“No, not now and not here,” she said, as she sucked hard on the cigarette and expelled a blue cloud of smoke.

“Mind if I open a window, the smoke bothers me?”

“Overly fastidious for a wolf,” she said with a smirk. “Sure open the window.”

He opened the French windows and pulled open the curtains. Below, across the street, in a soccer field, several grown men were playing. Beyond it the Eiffel Tower stood blocking his view of the city and the river beyond; it was so close in fact that he could see people climbing the stairs and hear them laughing and talking. He also heard music and the voice of barkers selling mementos to the tourists, waiting for their turn to climb the stairs for a view of the city.
With his back turned to her he pulled the whistle from the pocket of his coat lifted it quickly to his lips and blew. There was no sound except the witch pulling on her cigarette. He placed the whistle into his pocket as he returned to his chair.

“Where shall we meet for the exchange?”

“He can pick up his pup in the desert where we met in three weeks.”

“What?”

She waved her hand as if to say, take it or leave it.”

“But the pup is here in Paris now.”

“So, I have some things to do here, which involve the pup. I am not ready to relinquish him yet. I must thoroughly house train him. He is a bit wild and completely innocent.” She ran her tongue around her lips, as if checking her lipstick. “Well, you should be off because I have things to do.”

Vogel looked out the windows, wondering where Branwen was. Had she heard the call? The once clear blue sky now turned a dark purple, as burgeoning rain clouds rushed with a mighty wind from the north. Suddenly, a lightening bolt split the air and a few seconds later, they heard the thunder. The witch hurried to the window. She looked toward the North, as the room’s temperature began to plummet. The north wind tore at the woman’s hair and Vogel smelled rain. The woman turned to him and walked toward him, her face contorted with anger. “What did you do, Wolf? Who is coming in that?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Vogel, backing toward the door.

She raised her right hand as if to hit him and began to chant in Spanish. Vogel was caught now. He could not move or speak. Something over her shoulder caught his eye, a glint of steel and blue flash.

Branwen stood nude on the ledge as the rain lashed down on the building. Her hair was braided in hundreds of strands containing bits of colored glass and rocks and feathers and she had painted her face and body dark blue and green. She stepped into the room and the witch saw her reflected in Vogel’s eyes and she turned immediately to cast her spell against Branwen but Branwen had lifted her sword with two hands over her right shoulder and as soon as the witch turned she brought the sword down with an amazing strength and severed the witch’s head from her body in one stroke.

Blood gushed up and about the room. Vogel fell back against the wall, splattered with the witch’s blood.

Branwen smiled a crooked smile and walked to the bed and cleaned the blood from her blade.
The witch’s head rolled beneath the dresser and stopped with a thud and Vogel turned and saw her wild and angry eyes, which blinked twice and before the witch spoke.

“You bitch. You think you can end this with a sword. You stupid cow, I shall release all the fury of my sisters on you and on you, you pitiful stupid wolf.”

Branwen stood above the head and said, “Talk on witch, I have heard your threats before, maybe even your threats.”

As Vogel watched the two, a shimmer appeared in the room, like a heat wave lifting off the desert’s floor, and then Branwen began to change; black shiny feathers sprouted from her body and shone and glistened in the light of the lamps and where the young girl stood naked now appeared a large raven with purple black feathers, black beak and eyes.

The raven hopped under the dresser and snapped the witch’s hair up in her beak and dragged it, as it cursed her and Vogel in both Spanish and French, across the floor to the edge of the bed.
The sky cleared and all remnants of the storm disappeared. The raven, quorked, cawed, snapped and hopped onto the bed, where it dropped the head and then flew toward Vogel, who fell back against the door.

After a few turns around the room, the raven landed on the dresser and moved its head back and forth, one black eye watching Vogel, before it hopped onto the bed next to the head and fastened its beak once again onto the witch’s hair. With two strong flaps of its massive wings, the raven flew through window.

It was some time before Vogel dragged himself into the bathroom where he vomited into the toilet. He stared into the mirror afterwards and noted he was splattered with blood. He cleaned himself off as best he could and then took two wash cloths and cleaned every surface in the room that he had touched. He also wiped up the bloody tracks he had made when he had walked through blood.

Before leaving, he thought about every step he had taken before he entered the witch’s room. He was most worried about the flower girl, who could describe a senior American, who walked with the aid of a cane and who ordered flowers for the decapitated woman in Room 426.
He was finally ready to leave when he detected a faint scent on the wind, a scent he had smelled before in the desert, a feral smell like a large cat’s lair. He walked to the window and guessed it was coming from the southeast. He also picked up another similar scent emanating from the northwest and guessed the witch’s spell was broken because he could now pick out from the multitude of odors he was now receiving the distinctive odor of both the Coyote and his pup.

Before leaving the window, he noted hundred of birds wheeling about the spire on top of the Eiffel Tower and he thought he discerned Branwen carrying the witch’s head in the middle of the murder of crows.